Robert Delaunay quotes

Robert Delaunay was a French artist and one of the pioneers of abstract art. His work is recognized for its bold use of color and innovative exploration of geometric forms, particularly in the style known as Orphism. He greatly influenced the development of modern art and inspired countless artists with his creative vision. Here are 32 of his quotes:

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

Robert Delaunay

Nature engenders the science of painting.

Robert Delaunay

Light in Nature creates the movement of colors.

Robert Delaunay

On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning of Impressionism.

Robert Delaunay

Seeing is in itself a movement.

Robert Delaunay

Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint.

Robert Delaunay

But what is of great importance to me is observation of the movement of colors.

Robert Delaunay

Painting is by nature a luminous language.

Robert Delaunay

Light comes to us by the sensibility. Without visual sensibility there is no light, no movement.

Robert Delaunay

Simultaneousness' is a technique. Simultaneous contrast is the most up-to-date honey of this technique in this field. Simultaneous contrast is visible depth – Reality, Form, construction, representation. Depth is the new inspiration. We live in depth, we travel in depth. I'm in it. The senses are in it. And the mind is too.

Robert Delaunay

This happened in 1912. Cubism was in full force. I made paintings that seemed like prisms compared to the Cubism my fellow artists were producing. I was the heretic of Cubism. I had great arguments with my comrades who banned color from their palette, depriving it of all elemental mobility. I was accused of returning to Impressionism, of making decorative paintings, etc... I felt I had almost reached my goal.

Robert Delaunay

I can see the black spots of the sun [remark to Sonia Delaunay, his wife and female artist].

Robert Delaunay

As long as art cannot get free from the object, it will continue to be a description.

Robert Delaunay

The need for a new subject has inspired the poets, launching them onto a fresh path and bringing to their attention to poetry of la Tour [the Eiffel tower in Paris], which communicates mysteriously with the whole world. Rays of light, waves of symphonic sounds. Factories, bridges, iron structures, airships, the numberless gyrations of aeroplanes, windows seen by crowd simultaneously.

Robert Delaunay

What they are saying is okay [the Futurist artists like Severini, Carra and Russolo, who debated in Paris intensively with the Cubist artists].

Robert Delaunay

Impressionism; it is the birth of Light in painting.

Robert Delaunay

Direct observation of the luminous essence of nature is for me indispensable.

Robert Delaunay

Simultaneity in light is harmony, the rhythm of colors which creates the Vision of Man.

Robert Delaunay

The auditory perception is not sufficient for our knowledge of the world; it does not have vastness.

Robert Delaunay

First of all, I always see the sun! The way I want to identify myself and others is with halos here and there halos, movements of color. And that, I believe, is rhythm.

Robert Delaunay

I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them. One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them.

Robert Delaunay

This communication alone, by the comparison of the antagonisms, rivalries, movements which give birth to decisive moments, permits the evolution of the soul, whereby a man realizes himself on earth. It is impossible to be concerned with anything else in art.

Robert Delaunay